“A League of Their Own” Officially Ending With Four Final Episodes
Update: Despite the success of A League of Their Own by all knowable metrics, and the #MoreThanFour campaign, Prime Video announced yesterday that the series will officially end after four final episodes.
Vernon Sanders, head of television, Amazon and MGM Studios, said in a press release: “We’re deeply proud of the work that Abbi, Will, the cast, and crew have done reimagining A League of Their Own which has produced an incredibly loyal fan base as well as achieved numerous, well-deserved recognitions and accolades. After hearing what Abbi, Will, and the writing team have planned for the new story within this wonderful series, we are excited for our fans to see what comes next.”
Below is our original post from March 14th, when The Hollywood Reporter first broke the news, which was contradicted by co-creator Will Graham and which launched the fan campaign to save the series.
Well, a whisper of the news we’ve all been waiting for finally arrived today — and it’s not great, bob: Amazon Prime Video has renewed A League of Their Own… for a paltry four final episodes. Lesley Goldberg broke the story at The Hollywood Reporter this afternoon, noting that the announcement follows “months of renegotiations with Sony to lower the show’s licensing fee and after the cast had to sign new deals given the order is for half the episodes that were featured in season one.”
I don’t mind telling you that this news has broken the hearts of our entire team here at Autostraddle. Over the last several years, we’ve watched networks and streamers cut down gay show after gay show, with impotent excuses, but this is, by far, the most egregious cancellation. We are at a boiling point, in the United States, with anti-LGBTQ+ sentiment, and not only do we know for a fact that positive representations of LGBTQ+ people open real-life hearts and minds, we also know what a huge difference nuanced, relatable stories about LGBTQ+ people mean to the community itself. Sometimes stories are the only safe place we have to land. (There’s no place like home, you know?) A League of Their Own was a triumph of actually diverse — not just the buzzword — queer storytelling, highlighting Black women, Latine women, fat women, and trans and gender nonconforming characters.
It also doesn’t make a lick of fiscal sense. Look at this chart co-creator Will Graham shared about the series’ ratings just this week:
Fascinating to see #ALeagueOfTheirOwn having highest week of online engagement 7 months after release, with no new push from @PrimeVideo. It's beautiful to see new people who continue to find the show. People should be paying attention, this isn't normal. pic.twitter.com/hop9siqHiC
— Will Graham (@WillWGraham) March 12, 2023
A League of Their Own has an astronomical 94% Rotten Tomatoes rating. It brought home trophies from the Independent Spirit Awards, GLAAD, HRC, the NAACP Image Awards, and was a Critics Choice darling. And there’s absolutely no way it cost as much to make as some of Amazon’s other shows, most of which, by the way, received WAY more support and advertising from the streamer. Also it’s AMAZON; they have more money than god.
Will Graham tweeted this after The Hollywood Reporter’s article went up.
Just to answer the questions: The stuff that came out today is a leak and it isn't official, which is why we aren't saying anything. So if you want to see more episodes or more seasons of this show, now is your moment. People are listening.
— Will Graham (@WillWGraham) March 14, 2023
We’ll absolutely be there to cheer on our faves in their final four episodes, if that’s all they really have left — but wow, way to whiff an easy home run, Prime Video.